Left in charge

The handover note before summer leave reads the same in every office I have sat in. Two pages, sometimes a spreadsheet. Post the Tuesday content. Send the weekly report by Thursday. Chase the agency on the invoice. Do not touch the budget.

Read it again and notice what is missing. Every line is a thing the junior must do. Not one line is a thing the junior may decide.

The note was written for the wrong person. It was written for the comfort of the one leaving, so they can sit on a beach knowing nothing will be different when they get back. Nothing being different is the point. It is a note about continuity, addressed to the writer's own nerves.

The person actually reading it is the one staying, at a desk in a half-empty office, and for three weeks that person will meet things the note did not anticipate. A platform rep offering a credit that expires on Thursday. A post that lands badly at nine in the evening. A supplier with a better price if the order doubles. The note says do not touch the budget. It says nothing about a decision that arrived anyway.

So the junior does one of two things. They wait, the moment passes, and the manager comes back to a list of things that could have been done. Or they guess, and the manager comes back to a decision they did not make, and next year's note is longer and tighter.

The better note is shorter and harder to write. These are the calls you can make alone, up to this amount, in these situations, this is what I would do, and I will back whatever you chose.

What gets delegated in July is not work. It is permission, and the team that writes down the decisions a junior may take alone comes back to a better junior than it left.